Tony has some notes on the performances in this advertisement, Mrs Torrance.

Maybe one day somebody will explain why the people in tech advertising– especially white people in ads for east Asian companies– always seem to be deliberately portrayed as affectless, malfunctioning animatronic mannequins with a limited grasp of their own language (example 1, example 2). Surely the ideal user likes to see themselves as more human than their phone or gadget, not less? In this latest effort by what must be a Taiwanese company, judging by the surtitles and the reference to Taipei 101, an insane lady called Pretty Woman Smart Living talks to her finger like Danny from The Shining and never misses an opportunity to humiliate her boyfriend for his inability to do mostly pointless things with his phone. He should also stop cutting his own hair, or at least try looking in a mirror while he’s doing it.

(UPDATE: Damn, I killed it again. They’ve made the video private now.)

Amy Pretty Woman Smart Living can put on the blue light by conspiring with the palm of her hand (but doesn’t put on the red light, because that is a different thing and also an unwelcome, random reference to the lyrics of a song by The Police which would be distracting.) She can instruct her finger that she wants to watch Furious 7, which proves once and for all that she is mental. Not the finger thing, I mean voluntarily watching Furious 7. She can make a note to buy Coke via her hand because they’ve run out of Coke! It might have all been freebased and smoked by the person who signed off this ad for public release. I’ll assume they’re referring to Coca Cola but a cocaine comedown would explain the strange demeanour of these two. Her finger can find out that the nearest metro station for Taipei 101 is Taipei 101 metro station. Even if I was Siri or Cortana or something I don’t think I’d be able to answer the question “Where is the nearest metro station to Taipei 101?” without shouting “Obviously it’s called Taipei 101 station, shithead. Anyway, you live in Taipei, how do you not know this already?”

Oh, I jest about her being insane. Although she is clearly not the full shilling and her partner seems too stupid to work a doorknob, PWSL owes her lifestyle prowess not to incipient schizophrenia but instead to a special high tech (?) ring. The ring is called Aring. It’s not called a ring, although it is also a ring. Aring. A ring called Aring.

Where’s my Aring? Your herring? No, Aring. What do you mean, where’s a ring? No, Aring. I’m looking for Aring. I get that you’re looking for a ring. Stop saying that. Yes, Aring. I know, but I can’t help you unless you tell me which ring. Aring. Fuuuuuuuuu–

You may enjoy this badvertising even more when you know that in Britain, “ring” or “ringpiece” is slang for an anus. Of course there’s also this Ring, something that a sensible person would probably consider before naming a product involving communication with invisible forces:

More from Lives of the Necromancers (1834) by William Godwin. See Orpheus for an introduction to Godwin and the book.

Alexander the Paphlagonian

“At about the same time with Apuleius (note: the Numidian writer in Latin, circa 124 – 170 AD) lived Alexander the Paphlagonian, of whom so extraordinary an account is transmitted to us by Lucian (note: also alive during the events he recorded, circa 125 – 180 AD). He was a native of an obscure town, called Abanotica, but was endowed with all that ingenuity and cunning which enables men most effectually to impose upon their fellow-creatures. He was tall of stature, of an impressive aspect, a fair complexion, eyes that sparkled with an awe-commanding fire as if informed by some divinity, and a voice to the last degree powerful and melodious. To these he added the graces of carriage and attire. Being born to none of the goods of fortune, he considered with himself how to turn these advantages to the greatest account; and the plan he fixed upon was that of instituting an oracle entirely under his own direction. He began at Chalcedon on the Thracian Bosphorus; but, continuing but a short time there, he used it principally as an opportunity for publishing that Aesculapius, with Apollo, his father, would in no long time fix his residence at Abanotica…

… coming to Pella in Macedon, [he] found that the environs of this city were distinguished from perhaps all other parts of the world, by a breed of serpents of extraordinary size and beauty. Our author (Lucian) adds that these serpents were so tame, that they inhabited the houses of the province, and slept in bed with the children. If you trod upon them, they did not turn again, or shew tokens of anger, and they sucked the breasts of the women to whom it might be of service to draw off their milk. Lucian says, it was probably one of these serpents, that was found in the bed of Olympias, and gave occasion to the tale that Alexander the Great was begotten by Jupiter under the form of a serpent.

The prophet bought the largest and finest serpent he could find, and conveyed it secretly with him into Asia. When he came to Abonotica, he found the temple that was built surrounded with a moat; and he took an opportunity privately of sinking a goose-egg, which he had first emptied of its contents, inserting instead a young serpent just hatched, and closing it again with great care. He then told his fellow-citizens that the God was arrived, and hastening to the moat, scooped up the egg in an egg-cup in presence of the whole assembly. He next broke the shell, and shewed the young serpent that twisted about his fingers in presence of the admiring multitude. After this he suffered several days to elapse, and then, collecting crowds from every part of Paphlagonia, he exhibited himself, as he had previously announced he should do, with the fine serpent he had brought from Macedon twisted in coils about the prophet’s neck, and its head hid under his arm-pit, while a head artfully formed with linen, and bearing some resemblance to a human face, protruded itself, and passed for the head of the reptile. The spectators were beyond measure astonished to see a little embryo serpent, grown in a few days to so magnificent a size, and exhibiting the features of a human countenance.

Contemporary (2nd century AD) statue of Alexander’s snake-god-puppet Glycon. From the National History and Archaeology Museum, Constanţa, Romania.

More from Lives of the Necromancers (1834) by William Godwin. See Orpheus for an introduction to Godwin and the book.

John Fian

Although this anecdote is ridiculous, it comes from the late 16th century witch hunt period so it has a predictably brutal ending. John Fian was a young schoolmaster from Tranent, near Edinburgh. He was one of a number of unfortunate people tortured over accusations of witchcraft. Godwin writes that Fian was “tortured by means of a rope strongly twisted around his head, and by the boots.” The boots were actually cruder than they sound, usually just a kind of vice designed to crush the feet and lower legs. Even people who survived the torture were usually crippled.

“He told of a young girl, the sister of one of his scholars, with whom he had been deeply enamoured. He had proposed to the boy to bring him three hairs from the most secret part of his sister’s body, possessing which he should be enabled by certain incantations to procure himself the love of the girl. The boy at his mother’s instigation brought to Fian three hairs from a virgin heifer instead; and, applying his conjuration to them, the consequence had been that the heifer forced her way into his school, leaped upon him in amorous fashion, and would not be restrained from following him about the neighbourhood.”

The night after delivering his stupid cow sex story, and confessing to other things such as being the Devil’s clerk and playing a part in trying to sink King James’ ship with magic, Fian escaped from prison. By the time he was recaptured he had apparently resolved never to have another false word coerced from him. Although he was tortured again, he continued to deny all his former confessions until the king ordered him to be strangled and his body burned. As Godwin notes, “multitudes of unhappy men and women perished in this cruel persecution,” which is one of the most shameful episodes of mass hysteria in British history.

Some interesting stuff from Lives of the Necromancers (1834) by William Godwin, the proto-anarchist and father of Mary “Frankenstein” Shelley, nee Godwin. Well, interesting if you’re into necromancers anyway. And who isn’t interested in necromancers? Nobody I want to hang out with, is the answer.

William Godwin also wrote a novel called St. Leon (1799), about a man who artificially attains immortality. Without taking anything away from Mary– she was undoubtedly the most talented of the famous four who played at writing stories near Lake Geneva in 1816, not to mention being only eighteen years old at the time– it’s obvious that her super cool father with his love of fringe science and radical politics was a big influence on her. Godwin’s wife and Mary’s mother was the feminist Mary Wollstonecraft, though Mary senior sadly died of septicaemia shortly after giving birth and so never knew her daughter. Oh, to be a dinner guest at that household…

Orpheus

But anyway: Orpheus. Having screwed up a rescue of his late wife Eurydice from the underworld, according to many stories he henceforth restricted himself to male company. The Maenads– female followers of the ecstatic god Dionysus, whose name literally means “the raving ones” or “ravers”– decided to get crunk with Orpheus whether he liked it or not:

As has been said, he fell a sacrifice to the resentment and fury of the women of his native soil. They are affirmed to have torn him limb from limb. His head, divided from his body, floated down the waters of the Hebrus, and miraculously, as it passed along to the sea, it was still heard to exclaim in mournful accents, Eurydice, Eurydice! At length it was carried ashore on the island of Lesbos. Here, by some extraordinary concurrence of circumstances, it found a resting-place in a fissure of a rock over-arched by a cave, and, thus domiciliated, is said to have retained the power of speech, and to have uttered oracles. Not only the people of Lesbos resorted to it for guidance in difficult questions, but also the Asiatic Greeks from Ionia and Aetolia; and its fame and character for predicting future events even extended to Babylon.

Lafcadio Hearn, in his Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan (1894), sums up nicely how I feel about the place over a century later:

“The largest steamer that crosses the Pacific could not contain what you wish to purchase. For, although you may not, perhaps, confess the fact to yourself, what you really want to buy is not the contents of a shop; you want the shop and the shopkeeper, and streets of shops with their draperies and their inhabitants, the whole city and the bay and the mountains begirdling it, and Fujiyama’s white witchery overhanging it in the speckless sky, all Japan, in very truth, with its magical trees and luminous atmosphere, with all its cities and towns and temples, and forty millions of the most lovable people in the universe… ‘And this,’ the reader may say,—’this is all that you went forth to see: a torii, some shells, a small damask snake, some stones?’ It is true. And nevertheless I know that I am bewitched. There is a charm indefinable about the place—that sort of charm which comes with a little ghostly ‘thrill never to be forgotten. Not of strange sights alone is this charm made, but of numberless subtle sensations and ideas interwoven and inter-blended: the sweet sharp scents of grove and sea; the blood-brightening, vivifying touch of the free wind; the dumb appeal of ancient mystic mossy things.”

I’ve been to Japan several times and even though it’s still summer I’m already near to projectile vomiting with excitement because I’m going back for an extended tour in the autumn. If you’re a Japanese (or Japan-based) follower, artist, film maker or blogger and want to say konnichiwa, hang out, have a drink, or whatever this October then please don’t be shy: send me a message. I usually don’t bite.

Although Hearn undeniably romanticised and exoticised the place he did so with some justification, since this Irish-Greek man who’d been abandoned by his entire family and travelled the world met and married his wife in Japan, finding at last the home he’d always sought. With hindsight his frequent celebration of the deference and conformity of traditional Japanese society is particularly problematic given that these very traits facilitated and exacerbated Japan’s brutal imperialist ventures over the next fifty years, not to mention the atrocities and exhortations to suicide committed by the Japanese military up to the end of WWII. This is hindsight, though. Hearn wasn’t to know, and his awestruck account of travelling around a place that had been forbidden to foreigners on pain of death only a few years previously is still full of lovely stuff.

Gods

“And the tenth month of our year is called the “No-God-month,” because in that month all the deities leave their temples to assemble in the province of Izumo, at the great temple of Kitzuki… But there are gods with whom it is not desirable to become acquainted. Such are the God of Poverty, and the God of Hunger, and the God of Penuriousness, and the God of Hindrances and Obstacles. These are of dark colour, like the clouds of gloomy days, and their faces are like the faces of gaki. (Note: in modern Japanese gaki means “brat”, but Hearn is referring to hungry ghosts, punished in the afterlife with ceaseless appetite.) … It is said there are two gods who always go together,—Fuku-no-Kami, who is the God of Luck, and Bimbogami, who is the God of Poverty. The first is white, and the second is black.’ ‘Because the last,’ I venture to interrupt, ‘is only the shadow of the first. Fuku-no-Kami is the Shadow-caster, and Bimbogami the Shadow.’ … The God of Scarecrows is Sukuna-biko-na-no-Kami.”

Foxes

Fastened to the wall of [the] shrine is a large box full of small clay foxes. The pilgrim who has a prayer to make puts one of these little foxes in his sleeve and carries it home, He must keep it, and pay it all due honour, until such time as his petition has been granted. Then he must take it back to the temple, and restore it to the box, and, if he be able, make some small gift to the shrine…

You approach it through a succession of torii one behind the other: they are of different heights, diminishing in size as they are placed nearer to the temple, and planted more and more closely in proportion to their smallness. Before each torii sit a pair of weird foxes—one to the right and one to the left. The first pair are large as greyhounds; the second two are much smaller; and the sizes of the rest lessen as the dimensions of the torii lessen. At the foot of the wooden steps of the temple there is a pair of very graceful foxes of dark grey stone, wearing pieces of red cloth about their necks. Upon the steps themselves are white wooden foxes—one at each end of each step—each successive pair being smaller than the pair below; and at the threshold of the doorway are two very little foxes, not more than three inches high, sitting on sky-blue pedestals. These have the tips of their tails gilded. Then, if you look into the temple you will see on the left something like a long low table on which are placed thousands of tiny fox-images, even smaller than those in the doorway, having only plain white tails. The pieces of coloured cloth about the necks of the foxes are also votive offerings…

At the rear of almost every Inari temple you will generally find in the wall of the shrine building, one or two feet above the ground, an aperture about eight inches in diameter and perfectly circular. It is often made so as to be closed at will by a sliding plank. This circular orifice is a Fox-hole, and if you find one open, and look within, you will probably see offerings of tofu or other food which foxes are supposed to be fond of. Now the fox for whom such a hole is made is an invisible fox, a phantom fox—the fox respectfully referred to by the peasant as O-Kitsune-San. If he ever suffers himself to become visible, his colour is said to be snowy white.

Dogs and cats

‘Feed a dog for three days,’ says a Japanese proverb, ‘and he will remember your kindness for three years; feed a cat for three years and she will forget your kindness in three days.’

An 1890 cartoon by John Tenniel, in which the Old Lady of Threadneedle Street– the Bank of England, so called for the City of London street where it was and still is located– doles out free money to silly, naughty boys, AKA bankers. The more things change the more they stay the same, and all the other appropriate sayings…

Two nice details: firstly, the boys have been playing at cards (emphasising that they’re just gambling and can lose just as easily as they win, no particular skill involved) and secondly, the Old Lady’s costume is made of money bags and bank notes.

“SAME OLD GAME”OLD LADY OF THREADNEEDLE STREET. “YOU’VE GOT YOURSELVES INTO A NICE MESS WITH YOUR PRECIOUS ‘SPECULATION!’ WELL – I’LL HELP YOU OUT OF IT, – FOR THIS ONCE!!”

Some good advice for writers who would like to get better and a comprehensive demolition of clichés by bad writers in William Zinsser’s book On Writing Well. As I point out every single damn time I do a post about good writing, forty years on from this book’s original publication, people are still making all the mistakes Zinsser pointed out as ancient and trite even at the time. Many a supposedly professional author or journalist is still allowing themselves to be “a writer lives in blissful ignorance that clichés are the kiss of death, if in the final analysis he leaves no stone unturned to use them, we can infer that he lacks an instinct for what gives language its freshness. Faced with a choice between the novel and the banal, he goes unerringly for the banal. His voice is the voice of a hack.”

Old never meets old

“There are many categories I’d be glad never to see again. One is the future archaeologist: “When some future archaeologist stumbles on the remains of our civilization, what will he make of the jukebox?” I’m tired of him already and he’s not even here. I’m also tired of the visitor from Mars: “If a creature from Mars landed on our planet he would be amazed to see hordes of scantily clad earthlings lying on the sand barbecuing their skins.” I’m tired of the cute event that just happened to happen “one day not long ago” or on a conveniently recent Saturday afternoon: “One day not long ago a small button-nosed boy was walking with his dog, Terry, in a field outside Paramus, N.J., when he saw something that looked strangely like a balloon rising out of the ground.” And I’m very tired of the have-in-common lead: “What did Joseph Stalin, Douglas MacArthur, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Sherwood Anderson, Jorge Luis Borges and Akira Kurosawa have in common? They all loved Westerns.” Let’s retire the future archaeologist and the man from Mars and the button-nosed boy. Try to give your lead a freshness of perception or detail…

Towns situated in hills (or foothills) are nestled— I hardly ever read about an unnestled town in the hills— and the countryside is dotted with byways, preferably half forgotten. This is a world where old meets new— old never meets old.”

Ego and egotism

“A thin line separates ego from egotism. Ego is healthy; no writer can go far without it. Egotism, however, is a drag, and this chapter is not intended as a license to prattle just for therapy. Again, the rule I suggest is: Make sure every component in your memoir is doing useful work. Write about yourself, by all means, with confidence and with pleasure. But see that all the details—people, places, events, anecdotes, ideas, emotions—are moving your story steadily along… Anyone who thinks clearly can write clearly, about anything at all.”

Style

“The common assumption is that the style is effortless. In fact the opposite is true: the effortless style is achieved by strenuous effort and constant refining. The nails of grammar and syntax are in place and the English is as good as the writer can make it… writing is the expression of every person’s individuality, and we know what we like when it comes along. Again, however, much can be gained by knowing what to omit. Clichés, for instance.”

Search for stupid stuff

Search for:

A Mark, a Yen, a Buck or a Pound…

If you like this blog and have been intrigued, titillated, surprised or disgusted by anything you've seen here then please consider sending a few £/€/$/¥ etc. my way by getting one of my books. They're written by the same person who writes this blog, so you will like them too. They're available in print, or as ebooks for every existing type of reader and tablet. You can also tip my films on Vimeo, if you want. Thanks.

Latest from my art world blog: CAREER SUICIDE

SOME NOTES AND CONCLUSIONS I’m seriously tardy because the event in question was several months ago, but SEVERAL MONTHS AGO I was invited to the artist-run Generator Projects in Dundee to talk about a-n’s Paying Artists campaign, which I have worked on over the past year or so. Generator paid me, by the way. Not […]

Originally posted on Alistair Gentry: I’ve started writing a regular column for Sluice magazine. My first one is about the toffs’ reconquest of the visual arts after a brief interlude of social mobility. OBVIOUSLY. The London launch for the magazine is on Saturday 30th April at IMT Gallery, 210 Cambridge Heath Road, E2, 6-9pm. Please…

Some gems from Raw Creation: Outsider Art and Beyond by John Maizels. Regular readers of this blog will know that I like a bit of O/outsider attitude. “What country doesn’t have its small sector of cultural art, its brigade of career intellectuals? It’s obligatory. From one capital to another they perfectly ape one another, practising […]